Firefox 13 is out now and it’s all about speed. Chrome and Opera also introduced new versions of their browsers recently, so we thought it was time for another browser speed test. We’ve once again pitted the four most popular Windows web browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab loading times and more, with some unexpected results.

2 May 2012

It’s fashionable to hate on Internet Explorer, yet I doubt half of the hate-spewing IE trolls have even used it in the past few years. So I decided to set the record straight. I used IE as my main browser for an entire week to see whether the historical IE hate still held water, and here’s what I found.

15 February 2012

Chrome 17 is out with a new pre-rendering feature designed to make your pages load faster, and both Firefox and Opera have also released speedy new versions since our last round of speed tests. So, we’ve once again pitted the four most popular web browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab loading times,and more, with more surprising results.

28 September 2011

Firefox 7 is set to be released today, and with a big focus on performance, we thought it time for another round of browser speed testing. We pitted the four most popular Windows browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab-loading times, JavaScript powers and memory usage, with some surprising results.

4 April 2011

Quite some time back, we featured Classic Shell, a useful add-on for Windows 7 users (like me) who don’t find the modernised Start menu as useful as its predecessors. A new update to the add-on lets you customise IE9′s captions and status bars.

24 March 2011

It turns out that Internet Explorer 9, in its 64-bit version, apparently has a different, slower JavaScript engine than its 32-bit counterpart. We didn’t know that when starting our browser tests, but we’ve now updated our tests with IE9 32-bit results, at least in the JavaScript and CSS categories. Doing so gave IE 9 32-bit an edge in at least one category. Thanks to commenters and Twitter correspondents who pointed this out.

23 March 2011

It has been quite a month for browsers, with Internet Explorer and Firefox both dropping big new versions, and Chrome and Opera continuing their regular improvements. We tested all these browsers’ startup and tab-loading times, JavaScript powers, and memory use for your fast-minded enjoyment. Update: With 32-versus-64-bit IE 9 results.

21 March 2011

Internet Explorer 9′s use of application reputation to warn users that they’re installing software which hasn’t been widely tested is a familiar tactic, albeit one that’s previously been the domain of security software. If you’re regularly testing software that changes frequently (such as the Chromium project on which Chrome is based), that tactic could becoming annoying fairly quickly.

15 March 2011

The final release version of Internet Explorer 9 should hit Microsoft’s servers at 3PM AEST today. It will also eventually appear for Vista and Windows 7 users via Windows Update, but that process may not happen for up to 12 weeks. We were quite taken with IE9 in beta, and even if your own browser allegiance goes elsewhere, at least your non-tech relatives will likely soon have an HTML5-compliant browser. [Microsoft]